


beneath this bold and brilliant sun

by musicspeakstoo



Category: DCU, Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Superfamily (DCU)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-22
Updated: 2016-01-22
Packaged: 2018-05-15 11:33:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5783842
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicspeakstoo/pseuds/musicspeakstoo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five questions Kara asked someone about her cousin and one she asked him herself</p>
            </blockquote>





	beneath this bold and brilliant sun

**Author's Note:**

> there's not enough superfam fic out there, i set out to rectify that. i originally posted this a couple weeks ago on my tumblr and got zilch, but my dear friend mollie asked me to post it again, so this is for her. no real spoilers for the show, so if you're not familiar with it, you'll still be able to understand the fic. title from the decemberists' don't carry it all.

1) 

The crystal that her parents put in her ship makes it so she learns English easily. However, she refuses to speak it, or speak at all. She’s on a new planet with people she doesn’t know and a whole culture that’s completely different than hers and the closest thing she has to family is a man who, last time she saw him, couldn’t even lift his own head. 

The Danvers are nice, for all that they’re strangers. Alex and Eliza are always there to help her or explain something to her, but it’s Jeremiah to whom she speaks her first words in months. 

She wakes up one night from a nightmare which she can’t remember, but she also can’t shake the feeling of dread. She hears noises from downstairs and goes to investigate. She gets to the top of the stairs before she hears the voice.

She only heard it a few times, months ago, but she couldn’t forget it if she tried. 

She crouches down on the stairs to get a better view and sees him talking to Jeremiah in the front door. He nods at whatever Jeremiah is saying, she’s having trouble controlling her super hearing so she doesn’t hear it, and then suddenly flies off.

“Does he always do that?” She asks, coming down the stairs.

Jeremiah starts, then chuckles, “Usually he says goodbye first, but he’s a busy guy. Now, let’s get you to bed.”

2)

Kara’s first fall on Earth brings with it a series of strange holidays. After the one with the candy, there are a few weeks in which things go back to normal, until one afternoon when Eliza and Jeremiah sit her down and explain something called “Thanksgiving”, a holiday in which people get together with their families and celebrate what they have in their lives. They explain that they know it will be hard for her, but that Eliza and Jeremiah’s relatives are coming over and that she is part of their family, so these people are her family too. 

She’s not sure she understands, but dutifully helps clean the house and cook the food. This holiday involves a lot food, she mentally notes. They don’t allow her to use her heat vision to help them cook, which seems silly but she doesn’t want to argue. 

When the day comes, what feels like a hundred people show up, all packed into their small house. All of them hug her and welcome her to the family, but when she leaves the room, she hears them tutting about what a brave girl she is, to lose all her family like that and still be so sweet. 

She doesn’t realize she’s looking for him until Jeremiah clears his throat and says, “Well, now that we’re all here, let’s start dinner!”

She doesn’t eat much, a pit in her stomach that she can’t get rid of. She runs up to her room as soon as everyone leaves the table. She throws herself onto her bed, sobbing. There’s a knock on the door and Alex comes in, shutting the door behind her. She pulls Kara into a hug and Kara lets her.

“Why doesn’t he want me?” she cries into Alex’s shoulder.

“Shh shh, it’s okay.” Alex says, rubbing her back. “He doesn’t know what he’s missing.” 

There’s something in her voice that sounds suspiciously protective. It makes Kara feel just a tiny bit better.

They stay in her room until Eliza calls up the stairs for them to come eat dessert.

3)

Jeremiah dies. Eliza and Alex sob and walk around the house like it’s too big now. Kara tries very hard to help them, she does the dishes and all of the chores around the house so they won’t have to, but the thing is, she didn’t know him all that well and she thinks that if she lets herself grieve for him, she’ll really be grieving for her parents and that’s not fair to any of them.

The funeral is strange, all of the people that she saw at Thanksgiving are there, but none of them are laughing, although they still hug her. They all congregate back at the house, halfheartedly picking at the plates of fruit that Eliza had put out. 

It’s only after everyone else is gone, Alex is in her room, and Kara is in the kitchen, putting plates in the dishwasher, that he appears. Again, all she hears is his voice, pitched low and sad. She peers through a crack in the kitchen doorway, watches as he pulls Eliza into a hug. 

They talk briefly, but Kara doesn’t try to overhear. Privacy is something that’s important on both of her planets, she’s learned. Eventually, she hears the sound of the front door opening and closing, and then Eliza comes into the kitchen.

“Oh, sweetheart, you don’t have to do that.” Eliza says, pulling her into a hug.

“It’s okay, I want to,” she answers. “My cousin was here, right? He was Jeremiah’s friend, right?”

It’s not that her cousin is a taboo topic, but ever since Thanksgiving, it seems like the Danvers went out of their way not to mention him.

Eliza smiles at her, “Your cousin is a wonderful man, Jeremiah and I knew him for many years. We were very honored when he asked us to take care of you and that hasn’t changed, now that Jeremiah is gone.” 

Eliza pushes her hair back from her face and Kara suddenly misses her mom like a punch to the gut. She hugs Eliza fiercely and they both stand there, missing their loved ones.

4)

There’s an escaped convict on the loose, one who has somehow been exposed to Kryptonite and therefore able to shoot beams of it from his hands. She manages to lure him into a trap that the DEO set and they neutralized him. She’s lying under the sunlamp, they nearly hadn’t gotten there in time and she was feeling a little weak.

Director Henshaw comes to see her just as she starts to sit up. 

“Congratulations, this escapee was very dangerous, I doubt your cousin could have handled him.”

She frowns at him, “Why do you say that?”

“Your cousin has a bad habit of doing things by himself, I’m not sure why, but he does and if it had been Metropolis that this guy fled to, he would have been way over his head.”

He claps her on the shoulder and leaves. Maybe it’s because he was the last person to see Jeremiah alive, or maybe it’s because she never really trusted him in the first place, but she has a feeling he’s wrong about her cousin.

5)

She’s angrily punching at an SUV when James finds her. Cat had snapped at her for not getting her a salad fast enough, Winn isn’t speaking to her for some reason, one of the interns in layout made fun of her while she was standing right there, and Lucy had gotten James a gorgeous new briefcase, just because, and he had spent the whole day showing it to anyone who would listen.

To top it all off, Livewire escaped and Kara had to go track her down, only to get electrocuted about four times until she’d finally gotten the upper hand.

She gives the SUV another hard punch, collapsing the roof. James holds up his hands placatingly as he walks toward her,“Hey, whoa there, Rocky, what did the gas guzzler ever do to you?” 

She sighs and turns to face him, “It’s not the car, I just had kind of a rough day today.”

“Yeah, Alex told me about Livewire. That sucks, but your cousin had bad days like that, too.”

She know he’s trying to be nice, but it only pisses her off even more, “Then why didn’t he warn me about this? Why did he dump me with strangers instead of taking me to live with him, or the people that raised him?”

She can feel tears pricking her eyes, “Does he care about me at all?”

James face softens, “Kara, _of course_ , he does. I remember he used to call the Danvers all the time, asking about you. He once spent an hour telling me all about the first story you wrote for your high school paper. . And as for why you didn’t go live with his family, well, his dad died shortly before you came and his mom is older, plus they have a farm to run. He didn’t think she could handle all of that plus raising another superpowered kid. But I promise you, Kara, he loves you so much.”

She sniffles, “Then why have I barely seen him?”

James puts his hands on her shoulders and looks her in the eye, “Kara, your cousin has made a lot of enemies in his time on Earth. Many of them wouldn’t lose sleep over killing a little girl. He didn’t want to put you in danger on top of the trauma you already had over losing your parents and your planet.”

She takes in a shaky breath and nods. She’d always known that there was a logical explanation for why her cousin stayed away, but insecurities crowded that part out, so it was good to have someone else say it to her. 

James clasps his hands together and smiles at her,“Now, how about some food, huh? I make a killer lasagna, Lucy’s got great taste in wine, and I know superheroes need to eat. How about it?”

She grins at him, “Sounds great!”

+1

She doesn’t remember Zod, not really. She was still too young for her parents to talk about him in front of her, but she thinks she remembers a couple news clips. None of them mentioned Brainiac, though, she thinks she’d remember.

Her emergence into the public eye makes both of them a target and she knows even as she goes to face him that it’s probably just a trap for her cousin. Luckily, Brainiac underestimates her and she fights him long enough for her cousin to come in as backup. It costs both of them, though, and they stumble their way through the bunker, toward the yellow sun that will heal them.

Later, when they’ve called the DEO in for cleanup and they’ve both been dismissed, they fly up to the roof of CatCo and sit at the edge, looking out at National City beneath them.

“Thanks for saving my life. Again,” she tells him. He might be her cousin and she may have tickled his feet to make him smile once upon a time, but that was many years and galaxies ago, and she doesn’t quite know how to act around the Man of Steel.

He smiles at her warmly, “Of course. I’m glad to fight alongside you, you’ve got a killer right hook.”

She blushes at the compliment, “Thank you. You’re not too bad yourself.” 

She feels awkward saying that, but he grins at her again. It’s the same smile her father had and the same smile as her uncle. She sees that smile in the mirror. 

He clears his throat and turns so that he’s looking at her head on, “I know you’ve heard this from a lot of other people, and I don’t know if it means anything to you, but I’m really proud of you, Kara. You’re so amazing and you’re definitely handling all of this superhero stuff better than I did.”

She’s a little stunned, honestly. She hasn’t seen her cousin all that much over the years and most of what she knows about him, she’s gotten from secondhand sources like James or the media. She’d always pictured him as this serious, all-knowing guy, but maybe she’s wrong.

“Wow, really?” She asks incredulously.

He snorts, “Really. I nearly had a panic attack the first few times I put on the suit and helped people. I worried about someone recognizing me, about someone figuring out who I was, where my family was. I was worried about not being able to fit in at work, I’d never fit in as a kid, so why would work be different? I was worried that I was doing more harm than good by showing myself to the world. Certainly a lot of the world thought so, at first. Kara, all the things you’re currently worried about, I worried about too.”

Kara took a breath as she absorbed all of that. She really was wrong about her cousin, it seemed. Maybe he wasn’t so aloof after all. 

That thought gave her the courage to ask, “So why did you do it? Why continue to save people if it caused you so much worry?”

She knew why _she_ did it, but no one had ever asked her before and she thinks it’s been a long time since someone’s asked him. Maybe they both need to be reminded, after a day like this. 

He doesn’t even hesitate, “Because I was born with these abilities and I knew that I could use them to help people. I couldn’t turn my back on that, no matter what it cost me personally. People are good, Kara, even if they don’t know it or if it’s buried deep inside them, but people are good. Sometimes they need to be reminded of that and if me saving kids from house fires is what does that, then it’s worth every second of worry and every moment I’ve ever felt isolated.”

She nods, “I feel the same way.”

He smiles at her like he knew she was going to say that and she’s oddly warmed by that. They sit in comfortable silence for a moment, both of them lost in their thoughts.

Clark breaks the silence, “So, I hear that you’re a sucker for chocolate pecan pie. I’m more of an apple guy myself, know of a place to get a slice?”

She smiles at him, “Yeah, I think I do.”


End file.
